Plumb Good

Although I didn't particularly use the phrase, "plumb good," I grew up hearing it from the generation before me.  The word I chose to express the same notion was "really cool."  When my son was a teenager at home, he would say "that's really bad!"  All three generations were expressing, pretty much, the same thing using completely different words.  However, there was something lost in the meaning in my and my son's generation.

To say something is really cool is to say it is really good,   Paradoxically, to say that something is really bad is to say that it is really good.  But to say something was plumb  good not only conveyed that it was really good but it offered a standard for the goodness.

For most in this generation, "plumb" is a fruit or they may imagine it to be something to do with toilets as plumber work on those all the time.  The full meaning, however, conveyed by the phrase "plumb good," is lost on even the few in this generation who know it means really good.

The reason I know the full meaning of the word is because my dad, a retired Sergeant Major from the US Army Corps of Engineers, used a plumb when he was putting up a wall.  He had a solid brass plumb attached to a sturdy line that I actually used a time or two myself, attaching the string to the top and letting the plumb hang toward the ground.  "Plumb" meant that the wall was an equal distance from the sting from top to bottom. In this day of laser levelers and such, I doubt you'd ever see one used unless you went to a third-world country.

Another source for my understanding of what a plumb is comes from the book of Amos: "This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord asked me, 'What do you see, Amos? ' 'A plumb line, ' I replied. Then the Lord said, 'Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer'" (7:7-8).  God was measuring the orthodoxy or "straightness" of his people compared to the plumb line of his Word - the standard by which we are judged plumb or off-plumb.

Here's the notion from the phrase "plumb good" that is lost: Really good is not just a subjective evaluation but rather an objective one, which is obtained by using an accepted standard of measurement.  Something was really good because it was judged against that standard.  Today, we live in a "you can't judge me" world.  Good for us today is what feels good.  Whether it runs true with the Word of God or not doesn't figure in much these days - even in many churches.

The Supreme Court rulings and general acceptance of both abortion and same-sex marriage are examples of things judged good based on a feeling or notion rather than on God's Word, which clearly rebuffs both.  Today the right for both is established but neither one is right and while they are both viewed as good, neither one is "plumb good."  Jus' Say'n.